Director of Public Prosecutions v Pope

[2019] VCC 767

IN THE COUNTY COURT OF VICTORIA Revised
Not Restricted
Suitable for Publication

AT LATROBE VALLEY
CRIMINAL JURISDICTION

CR 18-02244

DIRECTOR OF PUBLIC PROSECUTIONS

v

IAN POPE

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JUDGE:	HIS HONOUR JUDGE SMALLWOOD
WHERE HELD:	Latrobe Valley
DATE OF HEARING:	29 May 2019
DATE OF SENTENCE:	29 May 2019
CASE MAY BE CITED AS:	DPP v Pope
MEDIUM NEUTRAL CITATION:	[2019] VCC 767

REASONS FOR SENTENCE
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APPEARANCES:	Counsel	Solicitors
For the Director of Public Prosecutions	Mr D. Gray	Office of Public Prosecutions
For the Accused	Mr B. Newton	Stephen Peterson Lawyers

HIS HONOUR:  

1Ian Pope, you have pleaded guilty to one charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice and one charge of persistent contravention of a family violence protection order.  That single charge of persistent contravention is to be treated by me, after agreement at the Bar table, as a rolled-up count extending over a period of time.  Apparently, the situation that is a matter of law, sometimes each period of time should have a different charge, but I make it very clear that the sentence I impose will be no different.  I am sentencing on the entire chain of events.  Attempt to pervert the course of justice carries 25 years; persistent contravention carries five years.

2You are now 49 years of age.  You pleaded guilty at the earliest reasonable opportunity.  Your counsel asserts remorse on your behalf and you must, of course, get the utilitarian benefit of that plea of guilty.  You have now been on remand for an extended period of time in relation to this and in relation to other matters, and of course totality has to play a part in all these proceedings.

3The situation is that whilst the further indictment of criminal history only has matters from Victoria, I am properly told from the Bar table that in fact, you have been in and out of custody since you were under 10 years of age.  You were brought up in a very violent family.  You were a ward of State by the age of 10.  You were in and out of foster homes.  You have, as has been indicated, done in the order of something like 24 years either in institutions or in custody, since you were 10 years of age.

4You have had seven children by four different women and you have had obviously a very itinerant and very difficult background.  As a child you were, I accept from the Bar table, subject to serious sexual abuse and that has never been dealt with and you are very resistant to having any such matters dealt with.  Clearly, there has been an underlying problem with anger and clearly an underlying difficulty with drugs and what always follows from that, some violence and dishonesty over an extended period of time. 

5I suspect the odds are very high, Mr Pope, that you are institutionalised, but there is not much I can do about that.  This process calls for me to sentence you for the offending that you have committed, given an appropriate sentencing bearing in mind the extremely difficulty and Bugmy-like, if I can put it that way, background.

6On the 25 April 2017, you were charged with assaulting your partner.  You ultimately received five months' imprisonment for that.  In May 2017 you, whilst in custody on this and we believe other matters, telephoned her and tried to get her to change her story.  The situation was that you were charged with assaulting her.  You told her in those telephone conversations from the gaol, which you must have known were going to be recorded, that you told the police that she had had a hammer and you were acting in self-defence.  She apparently then went to the police and endeavoured to or did change her statement and was told by the police that she may well be charged with perjury. 

7In any event, your attempts did not work and you received a sentence, as I have indicated.  These calls were recorded and during that period of time you were on an intervention order I have described, and you rang her on numerous occasions.  It should be pointed out in this situation, as it often is with these gaol matters, that when those phone calls are made from gaol, the person who is receiving the call is told that it is a call from gaol and is given the choice of either accepting it or not. 

8Yours was a not unfamiliar situation of having the phone number of your partner, as she then was but is not now, under a different name and that is done usually, in my experience, to avoid the consequences of intervention orders.  It was clearly done with her volition.  There are no threats involved and it is all part of the milieu in which I am afraid, you have existed for a very long period of time.  The breach of the intervention order, I regard as at lower range bearing in mind her participation in it. 

9The pervert the course of justice has to be regarded as serious.  You were in fact endeavouring to get her to change her story from one that involved you inflicting violence upon her and that in itself, in my view, aggravates the situation.  However, there were no threats, there were no other inducements and it falls within the mid-range of the types of matters that we get before this court.  Clearly, you knew what you were doing and you agreed, in fact at one stage you had a conversation with her, that what you were doing was wrong.

10The particulars of your background are essentially as I have outlined.  You, when you are released, want to make contact with your sister who is in South Australia and then go and live with her, either in South Australia or in Tasmania.  The prospects of your rehabilitation would have to be regarded as bleak, I would have thought in this situation.  The risk of you reoffending, bearing in mind your past history, would always have to be high.  These are circumstances which in my view, simply call for a straight sentence and it will be a sentence, where I do not have to impose, or not asked to impose a non-parole period.

11The sentence I am imposing will allow a situation where you remain in custody on remand on other matters which have got to be dealt with in the Magistrates' Court on 14 June, as I understand it.  And it is a matter for the magistrate, what he or she does on that day.  It involves matters of burglary.  Oher than that, nothing about them.  I do not want this sentence to be seen as in any way, shape or form dictating to the magistrate, what sentence should be imposed in that jurisdiction.

12Having heard the submissions of your counsel and seen the nature of the offending, it is my view that a straight sentence of 180 days on the charge of pervert the course; 30 days on the rolled-up charge of breach to be served concurrently with the sentence on the pervert the course, which leaves a total effective sentence of 180 days.  I direct that 180 days be reckoned as having been served under this sentence and I say that but for your plea of guilty, you would have been sentenced to be imprisoned for a period of 240 days.

13MR GRAY:  His Honour pleases.

14HIS HONOUR:  No other orders I need to make, gentlemen?

15MR NEWTON:  No, Your Honour.

16HIS HONOUR:  Can I just make it clear.  If there is a problem with that, that is subject to revision.  So, if there are problems, Mr Gray, do not hesitate to raise it again.

17MR GRAY:  Thank you, Your Honour.

18HIS HONOUR:  If there is a difficulty with that rolled-up business.

19MR GRAY:  Thank you.

20HIS HONOUR:  Nothing else to do with this matter?  Yes.  You can take him out.  Thank you.

(Offender removed.)

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